A path, a portal, an embrace. A call, a prayer, a hand on a chest, a fist, a seed, a fruit, an ocean, a star, a stone.

Another Sky is a London-based festival celebrating experimental music from the SWANA (South West Asia & North Africa) region and diaspora. Over three days and nights of listening, watching, dancing and connecting, they present composed, improvised and electronic music; short films and moving-image works; new commissions; and workshops.

On the Sunday, they also have their annual independent market at Dalston’s Cafe Oto, which brings together music, zines, books, crafts, textiles, gifts, honey and more. We are proud oto present Musiqa li Falasteen, موسيقى لفلسطين, at the market.

Musiqa li Falasteen, موسيقى لفلسطين, the latest transmission from Maqam.TV, is stitched from words, patterns, textures and gestures from Palestine and beyond in the region, to honour Palestinian people, their musical and poetic legacies, and the ways in which sumood is expressed. We invite you to watch, listen and embrace the piece during the festival, and to carry the melodies with you after it ends.

Musiqa li Falasteen موسيقى لفلسطين was crafted in an act of devotion, a near spiritual process of deep listening where for many of us it seemed a deafening silence had fallen. As an offering, Musiqa li Falasteen موسيقى لفلسطين can be experienced in a range of shapes and forms, ways that do not necessarily fit its initial container; in parts, with or without the video broadcast, in physical spaces, in online spaces that are not theirs. Squeezed in between events, as here, or absorbed into other programmes, as at the Arab British Centre. It is able to shapeshift and morph into whatever, wherever, it is needed, transmission taking precedence above all. It has been shared in parts in Marrakech and on Radio Al Hara, and now both visual and audio together.

It is presented as part of As We Are, Might Have Been and Could Be, a three-year visual arts programme at the Arab British Centre curated by Jessica El Mal. The programme aims to open up the possibilities of Arab Britain beyond the factual or historical, with room for play, interpretation and critique. Each project, whether a new commission, a workshop or a gathering, is a negotiation between past and present, fact and fiction, an embrace of the grey areas for colourful imagination.